From Publishers Weekly
Anthologist and author Herbert Van Thal (The Tops of the Mulberry Trees) has assembled four previous anthologies in one volume, with stories by 35 eminent mystery authors, including all-time luminaries Agatha Christie, P.D. James, Wilkie Collins, Raymond Chandler and Georges Simenon. The Mammoth Book of Great Detective Stories ranges from mid-20th-century English villains in drag (E.C. Bentley's "The Inoffensive Captain") to a hypochondriac crime-writer and reluctant sleuth in Devon (Edmund Cripin's "We Know You're Writing...") to a mysterious, hysterical woman who hires Jemima Shore to determine if she is mother to the Parr children, wards in a notorious divorce case (Antonia Fraser's "The Case of the Parr Children").
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